Sharp climb: out singer-songwriter Maia Sharp already pens hits for the greats. With her new CD, Sharp's poised to own the hits herself.

When teenage Maia Sharp wanted to practice saxophone licks, she'd cue up an album by an artist she admixed--Joni Mitchell, Sting, Jackson Browne--and play along. Her favorite singer to accompany, though, was probably Bonnie Raitt.

So imagine how the 34-year-old Sharp feels now: On Raitt's forthcoming album, Bonnie performs three songs written by the all-grown-up saxophonist, who also supplies vocal harmonies--and sax. Not only that, Raitt has also become a big booster of Sharp's own honeyed singing voice, showcased on her just-released CD, Fine Upstanding Citizen (Koch Records).

"It's off the hook," says a smiling Sharp of Raitt's support. "It makes me feel my existence is validated."

Raitt is just one of a growing crowd recording Sharp's music: She's been covered in the past by the likes of Cher, Edwin McCain, and the Dixie Chicks, and this year her songs will also appear on Trisha Yearwood and Kathy Mattea albums. As a recording artist, Sharp illuminates her perceptive lyrics and memorable hooks with heartfelt, unadorned vocals. She's a throwback--in the best sense of the word--to the craftworthy California singer-songwriters of the early 1970s, and it's no surprise why.

"My folks were entrenched in that [music scene]," says Sharp, who was born in California's Central Valley and moved with her parents to Los Angeles when she was 4. Morn is singer-tamed-anthropology professor Sharon Bays; Dad is singer-songwriter Randy Sharp, a well-known country music tunesmith. Maia, their only child, wrote and recorded her first song, "Ghosts," when she was 5, but from then until college she focused on learning a variety of instruments, including piano and guitar.

She returned to songwriting while studying music theory at California State University, Northridge, and it quickly became her priority. "I have friends who are artists because riley just love to be onstage; it's all about performing," she says. "But I want to share this thing that I've written--that's what I'm trying to serve."

She had her first live gig in 1993, and by 1995 she had drawn interest horn pop music impresario Miles Copeland (she recorded the first of her three albums for his Ark 21 label). In subsequent years she became an in-demand songwriting partner, collaborating with such heavies as Carole King mad Art Garfunkel, along with some of the biggest hit-makers in Nashville--including her dad. A storyteller more than a confessionalist, Sharp admits she's been putting a bit more of herself into recent songs. For example, in "The Reminder" on her new CD, the singer promises to be "the reminder" of how "you took a heart so innocent/Shattered it like glass."

Actually, Sharp was the shatterer. "I was a real ass to somebody," she says. "It really helped to write that song, to kind of yell at myself for doing it."

Her love songs typically eschew pronouns "on purpose, but not out of any secrecy or shame," she insists. "I have none. I'm only proud of who I am. I just want everybody to be able to sing along, word for word, at the top of their lungs, and not have to replace the 'she' with a 'he' or the 'he' with a 'she.'"

Out to her family since she was 23, Sharp is happily in an eight-year relationship with a woman on the business side of the music industry. Is her partner, then, a "suit"? "A pantsuit," she laughs. "She's awesome; we're fully intertwined."

Citizen promises to gain Sharp more attention than her previous releases, but she takes it in with a delightful lack of pretense. "I just do what I want to do anyway--writing, performing, recording--and slowly there's more success every year. The sparks are catching, and something really cool is on the horizon."

Wait, there's more ...

Hardly Glamour

(Ark 21; import) What's the sound of a big talent arriving on the scene? Listen and learn.

Maia Sharp

(Concord) Wide-ranging treats from insightful love lyrics to 5-year-old Maia's first song.

Kort is author of Dinah! Three Decades of Sex, Golf, & Rock 'n' Roll (Alyson).